Protect the Wild has called out Prince William over his hypocrisy after the royal issued an urgent call to ‘make peace with nature.’ William comes from one of the most well-known shooting families, meaning that while he appeals to others to change their relationship with the natural world, the Royal Family continues to target mammals and birds at home and abroad.
Protect the Wild believes that aside from the clear need for Prince William himself to ‘make peace with nature’ by choosing not to shoot wild animals, the 135,000 acre estate he owns – the Duchy of Cornwall – also has a lot of work to do to improve its relationship with the natural world.
The estate includes the Isles of Scilly, Highgrove House in Gloucester, Oval cricket ground in London, one third of Dartmoor National Park, forests, rivers, quarries, coastline and more.
The Duchy estate is building new housing developments in various places. Its Faversham housing development in Kent, for instance, is set to build 2,500 new homes. But the development includes the concreting over of 320 acres of biodiversity-rich grade 1 farmland, much to the outrage of residents. The Duchy states that it will establish new habitats within the development and “facilitate the seamless transition of existing wildlife” to them, but it is unclear how this will be achieved. Arguably, such a ‘seamless transition’ would be impossible and this is yet another false narrative in the world of PR spin.
Meanwhile, the grassroots group Wild Card launched a campaign in 2021 calling on William to rewild his Dartmoor land. But as of 2024, the Duchy only appears to have commenced with an expansion of one of the most famous rainforest fragments, Wistman’s Wood, and said it will further enhance another area called Black-a-Tor Copse. The Duchy has also said it will help to restore 800 hectares of peatland, but this amounts to a small proportion of its entire Dartmoor land. In other words, the prince has a long way to go to meet campaigners’ demands. Expanding small slithers of woodland is a start – but it isn’t nearly enough.
Moreover, responding to the prince’s call for economic changes and the realigning of financial flows “from destruction to regeneration,” Protect the Wild asks whether William will realign his own considerable financial flows as he calls for others to do the same? The Duchy of Cornwall is worth more than £1bn, effectively making William a billionaire.
As Protect the Wild’s Eliza Egret said: “William could do so much for biodiversity and for the environment but has so far failed to do so. The sentiment in his speech is laudable, but he has some audacity in expecting world leaders (as well as the public) to take his call for action seriously. A great deal will have to change for his words and small-scale actions not to be seen as cynical or simply PR spin.”
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